Dear on-campus student associations:

My name is Claire Donato. I’m a student here at Pitt…. Dear on-campus student associations:

My name is Claire Donato. I’m a student here at Pitt. A few things I like: the smell of fresh Xeroxes, poems about cities, procrastinating about my knitting projects and ethnic food. A few things I don’t like: white condiments — sour cream, ranch dressing, etc. — uncooperative CD burners, and litterbugs.

For clarification’s sake, UrbanDictionary.com defines a litterbug as “someone who litters.” Pretty simple, right? Right.

This word makes me write to you today to ask you — no, to beg you — to stop contributing to the amount of litter found on campus.

Walking to my 11 a.m. class in Langley Hall last week, I trailed a petite brunette holding a stack of rather promiscuous-looking postcards advertising an event called “Seduction” to be held at the Bikki Lounge in Shadyside. After every eight steps or so, she would inconspicuously drop one of the postcards on the sidewalk. Why? To advertise the event? Out of laziness? After she had dropped about three postcards, my friend and I began to pick up the postcards. By the time we made it to Langley Hall, we had gathered eight of these postcards and dropped them in the recycle bin. Effective advertising, right?

The point is that this careless form of “advertising” is actually littering. And that brunette is not the first member of an on-campus group guilty of bad fliering around Oakland. I have seen many promotional materials hastily strewn over Oakland’s streets all year: neon papers featuring clip-art elephants have been left on the edges of Bigelow Boulevard, streaked with tire-marks. Handbills encouraging students to party lie lifelessly on Fifth Avenue. I won’t even comment on the state of Forbes Avenue.

Sure, throwing 10 or so postcards on a street may seem like nothing, but really, what are the chances that a bored college student is always going to pick up all of the cards and throw them in a recycle bin? What if multiple on-campus organizations decided it would be a good idea to advertise their events by throwing fliers on the ground? We would have even bigger, uglier masses of papers around Oakland than there already are.

Disregarding my last mention of a few of Oakland’s messy streets, Pitt’s campus really is beautiful and clean. On campus, litter is an eyesore not only to Pitt students, but also to the University’s prospective students. Among its other dangers, litter can lead to fires. According to LitterBug.org, “every 12 minutes a fire starts in litter.” Litter can also be a safety hazard — paper blowing onto moving cars’ windshields, for example.

On-campus student organizations: Practice city-friendly event advertising. Oakland and the University both provide kiosks on which you can post fliers advertising your events for free. If you absolutely must distribute handbills, you can do so by sliding advertisements under doors in residence halls.

Students: If you see useless advertising litter on the ground in Oakland, don’t be completely lazy. Just pick the paper up, throw it in a recycle bin, and move on. We all have to live on this campus. We should make it as aesthetically and environmentally pleasing as we can.

Junk e-mail is like litter. Contact Claire at [email protected].